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FCC on Ultra-Wideband, DSL Services
ibirman writes: "According to Yahoo, the FCC has approved limited use of Ultrawideband (UWB) technology above 3.1 gigahertz. The article states that Sprint PCS among others has been campaigning to keep the minimum above 6 gigahertz claiming "interference". From what I have read, interference is not an issue, so I wonder what their real agenda is? Funny that the article does not mention that UWB could revolutinize high speed wireless networking." There's a Newsbytes story that decribes an upcoming ruling on DSL providers, which would exempt DSL carriers from the open-access requirements in place for most telephone services. There are a few links to statements on the front page of fcc.gov, but I don't see the actual orders for either of these yet.
And the phone companies can simply go fuck themselves.
You think Microsoft is bad. Call up Quest or Verizon. Or better yet, have them sell your information to anybody they want and get phone calls claiming to represent the phone company trying to sell you "$5,000 of free gasoline"!
The phone companies are evil and the sooner we can rid ourselves of them, the better.
sPh
Since when did SCSI terms because the naming noveau trend? UltraWide. I'm still waiting for SuperWide!
We had to destroy the sig to save the sig.
It's possible that a UWB system could interfere with these, but your UWB transmitter would have to be very close to your cell phone or TV. It's only been approved for very short distances, so there shouldn't be much risk of interfering with other people's cell phone reception, just that in your own home or office. Still, it's an interesting loophole for people who want to block cell phone signals. ("No officer, this isn't an illegal cell phone jammer, it's a UWB network!")
what if this interferes with other things? Imagine the horrors!
Larry Fullerton, now of Time Domain, invented a radar and wireless system based on pulses of energy less than a billionth of a second in duration. The scheme is known as ultrawideband. Although ultrawideband pulsed radar has been around for decades, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decided in 1987 that Fullerton's system was original enough to be patented.
In the early 1990s, however, Thomas E. McEwan, then an employee at the Livermore lab, came up with a related idea for a "micropower impulse radar" that employed different circuitry and worked at much lower power. His device can function for years on a couple of penlight batteries, he states. He got patents, too, and assigned them to his employer, which started licensing the invention to manufacturers. But McEwan failed to cite Fullerton's invention as "prior art" in his original patent application.
Sprint backed the wrong horse and spent millions in licensing fees to Livermore lab. Their opposition to UWB is pure vindictiveness.
Now Time Domain refuses to license UWB to sprint, putting them at an extreme disadvantage to ATT and other competitors.
Beautiful technology though... this is one of those real "could change the world" technologies like the step from Analog to Digital signaling
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Someone needs to say it, just to thrash out the issue.
There, it's done. Call me a conspiracy theorist!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
According to my frequency allocation chart, the 4.2 to 6GHz band is reserved (dually with some other things) for 'Experimental PCS'. Perhaps they're worried about people running amok in 'their' band?
Thanks,
--
Matt
In reading the story at yahoo, I found the following quote:
However, companies like mobile telephone service provider Sprint PCS and the powerful lobbying arm of the airline industry, among others, had urged the FCC to prohibit the use of UWB technologies below 6 gigahertz.
Now, I can certainly understand how a mobile phone service provider such as Sprint could have less-than-credible reasons for not wanting to move forward with this initiative... However, I do not understand what the airline industries motivation would be to get involved here except for a genuine concern for unsafe interference.
Personally, I could careless if my cell phone has a little bit of static as a result of leveraging UWB, but if my plane crashes due to interence then I may not be quite so understanding...
Then again, perhaps I am missing something obvious. Anyone have any thoughts on what ulterior motives the airline industry may have here?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
This is going to make radio astronomy more difficult. There are several spectral lines that lie between 3 and 10 GHz (I'm assuming that 10 is somewhere near the upper limit). As if light pollution and Iridium satellites weren't bad enough for visual astronomy, now radio astronomers are going to have to deal with elevated noise levels in a few interesting lines.
It looks like business wins out over the quest for knowledge once again.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
The reason Sprint probably wanted the band at a higher frequency is because higher frequency = high power needed to transmit, higher power needed = higher power batteries (AKA higher cost batteries for mobile devices), power supplies etc. With high cost of implementation comes slower adoption and therefore less new comers to the market place to compete with their existing infrastructure, services, etc.
"Should the FCC reclassify digital subscriber lines (DSL) as an information service as opposed to a traditional wire-line service, it could effectively loosen federal rules that require Bell companies and other incumbent carriers to offer their competitors equal access to the telecommunications networks they control."
What the hell? After the Bells displayed their ability to cut of CLECs like they were batting down baby seals within the existing rules?
What world is the FCC living in?
It took me a few minutes to realize that UWB has absolutely nothing to do with data communications at all. Sheesh
Supposedly, the US is mounting video cameras on soldiers' helmets that are transmitting along these frequencies and sending realtime data of the battlefield into the commanding officers' computers.
The US military will NOT give up this spectrum without a fight. We must lobby Congress to get this spectrum for the public, or be left even further behind than our European and Japanese friends. Think about it people: Snuff films for the military, or on-demand pr0n to my cell phone?
Liberate your mind in two clicks or less.
There are many users of the RF spectrum that don't fall into the category of "evil corporation". As an amateur radio licensee, I'm very concerned that widespread and unregulated use of UWB technology would further pollute the amateur radio bands with noise and interference. Cheaply made consumer electronics equipment, light dimmers, poorly maintained power lines and other "unintentional radiators" are a major source of interference in many places. That includes all of you people who run your computer with the case open.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
had a story about this on Morning Edition this morning.
a m
Here's the audio file of the segment:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20020214.me.07.r
A commentator on there seemed to think it would interfere with all sorts of things acting like a "layer of jelly" which the poor little GPS device could not operate through.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
How about those phones that are stuck in the backs of those seats that cut off your leg room. What freqency are they functioning on. Cause after all... cell phones work on those big planes ie. 911 calls before crashing.
I don't know what kind of investment the airlines have in those services.
Just a thought!
As a pilot, GPS interference is a MAJOR issue. Nearly every passenger aircraft relies on GPS for their navigation. If UWB will interupt this, there is a huge issue when it comes to the safety of aircraft flight.
Do you really want to be a passenger on a jet that all of a sudden looses it's ability to navigate off a primary system just because you want to have a faster wireless network? People will get killed, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
We can change the GPS system to use different frequencies, but that will take billions of dollars (every satelite will have to be replace, and all the equipment on every plane will have to be changed out, not to mention every handheld and automotive "never-lost" system will have to be replaced) and years to do (think 10 to 15 years).
My microwave oven operates at 2.4 Ghz. How safe is a long term exposure at point blank range. Microwave ovens are an intermittant use item and are not operated in your lap, hand or in your ear. The leakage is limited to a few mW per square cM at the surface of an oven. What is the safety of these wireless broadband microwave transmitters that operate in your lap with long duty cycles?
The truth shall set you free!
First, comparing the two systems' measurement accuracy is apples and oranges. UWB might be usable as a point-to-point ranging source, sort of like a stud finder, but it only tells you how far a given object is from, say, your handheld transmitter. GPS, on the other hand, gives you a three-dimensional position fix anywhere on earth (as long as you can see a reasonable patch of the sky). The two are simply not measuring the same thing. (Furthermore, a properly set up variant of GPS called a "differential" setup can deliver accuracy of better that 1cm.)
Second, UWB is not necessarily as low-power a system as is claimed in the article. Typical UWB transmitter power levels are around 1 milliwatt (typical cell phones are around 1 watt), which is ten times higher than what Cringely claims. (The idea is that because the energy is spread across a wide swath of frequencies, the power in any one band is relatively low.) Furthermore, UWB power levels are strongly dependent on the desired distance between transmitter and receiver.
Third, applications are currently being developed for using GPS and its variants indoors.
Finally, UWB can pose problems for GPS. The nominal GPS signal is, by design, about 15dB below the ambient noise floor -- that is, it's about 30 times quieter than the static you'd receive if you tuned a radio between stations. Thus GPS can be particularly sensitive to even very low-level intereference. I work in a GPS Lab and we have been examining the potential UWB-GPS interference issues for about the past two years. The point is, this is a big deal because GPS will likely be used in a number of safety-critical applications (e.g. landing airplanes) within the next 5-10 years. Dismissing the potential objections to UWB out of hand is therefore not only ill-advised, but potentially dangerous.
The list of publications on the lab's main page includes papers with detailed explanations of the points I've made above.
-FP
Why would they want this? Easy. Higher frequency = more waves per second. More waves per second, (everything else being equal) means the same amount of information can be sent in a shorter time.
On the other hand, higher frequency means shorter broadcast distance, and gets impacted by things like rain fade.
Yous get nothing for nothing. ELF signals can go around the world, through water, etc but you're bandwidth constrained, 8kHz of bandwidth (voice) is a lot when you're transmitting between 1-300Hz.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
According to Yahoo...
No, it's a story from Reuters. The attribution is clearly given in the byline. This is a common mistake made by Slashdot article writers. Think about it a second: if I saw this article about UWB on Slashdot and posted to Kuro5hin "According to Slashdot..." my attribution would be flat wrong. It is the same with stories posted to Yahoo and other news outlets. The byline gives proper credit and should be cited as the source, not the news outlet where one happened to read the story.
Edith Keeler Must Die
no one knows if it would interfere with these services? Everyone is so vague talking like "It could disrupt..." or "It may interfere...".
Or are they just FUD?
It's from radio terminology from (human) generations ago.
ELF (extremely low frequency)
VLF (very low frequency)
LF (low frequency)
HF (high frequency)
VHF (very high frequency)
UHF (ultra high frequency)
microwave (microwave - subdivided in to bands designated by one or two letters which HAVE changed)
IR (infrared)
X-ray (x-ray)
Gamma ray (gamma ray)
I think there may have been a medium frequency but I'm not sure. There's also:
IF (intermediate frequency) which is unrelated, referring to an internal signal in a superheterodyne receiver.
RF (radio frequency) which is more generic, covering everything from ELF to UHF or perhaps microwave, although its use tends to drop off outside the range between LF and HF.
Similarly there was narrow band and wide/broad band (referring to signal bandwidth significantly less than, or more than, that of AM or early-version FM signals modulated by telephone-quality voice). It's logical for radio engineers to apply the same set of modifiers when they start working with more extreme schemes and have to differentiate them from previous technology.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... cell phones work on those big planes ie. 911 calls before crashing.
But it's a good idea not to use them in a plane - unless it's an emergency. They won't screw up the navigation equipment. But from a plane they can be "heard" by dozens or hundreds of cells on the ground (depending on your altitude and location) and they chew up one call's worth of bandwidth resource at each cell base site.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This might not be a bad thing. Currently, with the pseudocompetition going on there is no quality of service guaranty like there is for leased lines. Making DSL the telco's alternative to T1 and related technologies might really be good inasmuch as it makes it possible both for state enforcement officials to pursue regulation of service quality and also for the telcos to make service level agreements possible. With the Covad vs. Verizon vs. whoever else still owns DSLAM thing going on, it's not in the best interest of the telco to make DSL work well and with bulletproof reliability. The other thing that might be good about this reclassificaiton is that there is a very real possibility that telco owned ISPs might not be able to provide data service to DSL as that might be considered providing long distance services.
I certainly don't think that changing the current mess that is DSL into something else is necessarily bad and likely no worse than the current silliness.
NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database has a large number of reported incidents where cellular telephones, and other electronic devices, have caused interference with aircraft communications and navigation equipment.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I dont think that UWB is what that one article on slashdot a while ago claims.
Wide band is already use in wireless links such as with cellphones.
They use Spread Spectrum which uses a very *wide Band* of frequencies for a single communication. I dont think that UWB is what they make it out to be, as looking like noise where the whole noise floor just raises a little. The timing modulation they talked about (or was that a different article?) is the same used as in TDMA. I dont think that it will be all as good as the hype. Just a more spread, spread spectrum type of dealeo.
" ", Anonymouse Coward
GPS uses two channels for positioning (L1 @1575.42 MHz and L2 @1227.60 MHz) and one for nuclear test detection (L3 @1381.05 MHz), none of which are anywhere close to 3GHz.
So, why do people who use GPS care? Are they worried about accidental emission in the 1.2-1.6GHz band?
In last week's EETimes, there was a good intro to UWB and its challenges, as well as a discussion about the (considerable) importance of the FCC ruling that just took place (in a front page story). The Web versions are:
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
> From what I have read,
.NET and therefore oppressing individual freedom.
> interference is not an issue, so I wonder what
> their real agenda is?
3 choices:
1) government oppression of individual freedom.
2) government campaigning for something besides
3) government acting more powerful than Microsoft, oppressing individual freedom in the process.
The only two systems that mobile electronics interfere with on aircraft are:
1) the ILS, which is a very old system, and is only used during landings (which is why you are required to turn off your gear, in the event of an abort from takeoff or a landing), and
2) the billing of AirFone minutes.
This thing is way overhyped.
If you were building a system from scratch for wireless internet, how would you do it today?
MMDS providers seem to be having lots of porblems that might be technical or might be excessive cash burn rate. Its run in the 2.ish ghz range and is line of site using well known technology. Sprint had been offering it in places like Chicago but isn't any more. From what I can tell MMDS is the lowest cost option right now and most of the others have never been rolled out or are still in the planning stages.
Some very small towns now have 802.11b systems but thats limited to a very small population and won't work for more than a few hundred people and they don't scale well.
I thnk it'd be a neato thing to tinker with. Is this within the reach of the average geek with some piece-parts from the electronis store and a few old desktop computers?
lets ask the all knowing GOOGLE
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
In fact, at some point, UWB will inevitably lead to interference. That is a simple fact of how radio works. The only question really is how much power and what UWB applications one can permit before UWB-related interference for non-UWB services becomes a real problem.
In fact, there is no question that UWB interference occurs. The question is whether one can allow UWB to be used at any power level without seriously disrupting normal radio traffic when it becomes widely adopted.
Of course, UWB is no threat to other UWB systems. Therefore, UWB licensees would not be opposed to it. In fact, one might well interpret UWB to be an attempt at doing an end-run around current channel allocations, and, ultimately, an attempt at forcing anybody who wants to have some sort of reliable radio communications to buy proprietary UWB technology. Whether it actually is or not depends on the level of interference it causes when deployed widely, and that is still an open question.
In other words, there is no reason to rush UWB to market--we can take our time testing the technology. In fact, there is no real reason for the FCC to approve UWB before the patents run out--why should we increase the noise floor of all our channels for the benefit of a single patent holder? If UWB is still interesting after the patents run out, great.
"seperate the male from the female hemp" George Washington.
UWB will not interfere with other communications even for short ranges because the technologies being developed work below thermal noise. This is why it is hard to even detect that someone is using UWB nearby; only if you know when the transmission is being made, you can extract the data from the random thermal noise. This requires modern signal processing chips, which will be cheap with mass production.
I wish Cringley had made this point clear.
I don't know the technical details of WHY... but it HAS been proven that UWB interferes with GPS. This is scary to me... as a budding pilot I know how vital GPS can be. Certainly, not an absolute requirement... but hell, IFR flight with VOR's is a bear, and one hell of a barrier to many people learning how to fly.
I'm not saying don't learn the "needles"... just that an archaic technology like that needs to make way for GPS if general aviation is ever going to stand a chance. VOR's as a backup... cool. GPS is the way of the future and many aircraft are already equipped as such. Even commercial airliners use GPS, they come that way from the factory. I don't want to go back to dead-reckoning unless I have an electrical failure (kills my GPS) AND a vacuum failure (kills my VOR guages) simultaneously!
Just my 2c worth!
Later this month, the House of Representatives will vote on the hotly debated Tauzin-Dingell broadband deregulation bill, which would allow Bells to offer broadband data services regardless of whether they open their local phone networks to competition.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 currently requires incumbents such as the Bells to prove that they have opened their historical local monopolies to competition before they offer any long-distance services.
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who opposed today's decision to publish the proposed rule, said he believed that the agency was going too far down the road toward setting competition policy.
"I fear we are out-driving the range of our headlights," Copps said. "We are not ready to go as far as this notice takes us."
So you see, the FCC has more than one opinion but they are being driven by pressure from Congress, specifically that Toe-Zan (might still be a democrat, it's hard to keep up with people who have no priciples) looser from right here in Louisana. So the cycle is comming to completion where a network built under government franchise protection and therefore public is being given to a few large private companies. I suppose that will make it easier for Toe-Zan to collect bribes as he knows where to go every year.
I should have seen it comming. The local Bell has used it's ownership of those lines to screw would be DSL providers all along. They have manipulated the process very well. They own the database of potential customers and use it to make telephone solicitations while failing to update the one they are forced to share with their competitors. It's funny how I was not available to have DSL when I moved less than a mile and had to kill my Telocity contract. Stranger still when I recieved a solicitation from BellSouth that it was available two weeks later, but Telocity could not sign me up. Finally, it became unavailable before the whole process could be gone through. So, no supprise they would push laws to obliterate those they have been ignoring for the last eight years.
Consequence: You ain't getting any. Large traditional publishers now own all broadband. Hollywood/TimeWarner own cable, the telcos own DSL and the traditional broadcasters (owned by GE, Westinghouse and Disney) own the airwaves. All of these intities have reasons to keep you from using the internet that should be obvious. Telcos wish to continue raping you per minute of conversation. Opinion control is the reason large companies are in broadcast, and they will not tollerate competition. Not being able to push crap through restricted channels would ruin more than Hollywood. Expect DHCP over all forms of connectivity, and worse forms of "intelligence" being added to networks. The internet is becoming a new form of comercial broadcast faster than I thought possible just two years ago.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The airlines are worried on a number of fronts:
1) GPS: Airports are located in congested areas which already have to deal with skyscapers, illegal parking garages, etc. Now with UWBs which walk right on L2 (GPS signal band) perhaps not individually but in aggregate it's likely there will be interference issues.
2) The Microwave Landing System widely used in Europe has a 5Ghz signal. This is also reserved band but may be interferred with by UWB. Like GPS this is used for bad weather landings. Not a time you want interference.
So, yes the airlines are rightly concerned and no it doesn't matter in the face of greedy telecoms. Until someone gets hurt...
Everyone's so concerned about their uber-leet GPS devices MAYBE being disturbed by this new technology, when the SB4100 completely OBLITERATES the entire AM radio spectrum for about 300'. I'm going to get modded to hell and back, I know. But perhaps we should look at the devices we have, and how they affect the radio spectrum.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
I'm not concerned that much about GPS, I'm concerned about amateur radio. And, yes, computer equipment is a big problem, both poorly designed cable modems, as well as people who run their computers with the case open. But UWB could end up being much worse.
My case is closed. Granted, the screws aren't in it, but the case is closed. And it's not just interference on the power lines, I get it in my car, too. And I can imagine what it does to amater radio, seeing as the eq under my desk(which DOESN'T claim any specific FCC compliance on the nameplate, which is IIRC in violation, but says "sutible for home and office use") drowns out the 50kw radio staion 3 miles away, line of sight.
It wasn't so much a post directed at this thread, either, it was one of those things where I'd "had enough" and hit [reply] at the easiest possible moment
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.